It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might start having a dig at commercial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to different types of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.
Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as tactical consultants for the task.
The current airline company to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.
One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers therefore preventing a price spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airlines and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.
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Airlines Concentrate On Biofuel Trials Gather Momentum
florianlockwoo edited this page 2025-01-11 13:36:42 +00:00